Music column: Chamber Singers of Iowa City features music of Mozart

Please join Chamber Singers of Iowa City for our final concert of the season at 3 p.m. May 14 at the Voxman Concert Hall, 93 E. Burlington St. in Iowa City. We will feature the marvelous music of Mozart.

What better music to celebrate Mother’s Day than with one of Mozart’s earliest pieces: Dixit et Magnificat, K. 193 (1774)? This two-movement work of the Vespers liturgy was written when he was only 18 years old. We will end with one of his most famous works, the Requiem, K. 626. Both pieces will be performed with orchestra and feature guest soloists Siyeon Kim, Elise Des Champs, Jesse Reed, and Brian Banion with David Puderbaugh conducting.

There has been much mystery about Mozart’s final work, the Requiem and his death. This is partly due to Mozart’s premature death at age 35, the cause of which some attribute to rheumatic fever and has been widely debated. The popularity of the 1984 fictional film, Amadeus encouraged a debate on the cause of death. According to Rushton, there is no foundation for the popular theory that Salieri poisoned Mozart. Whatever the cause, Mozart’s early death left one of history’s greatest musical compositions unfinished.

Benedikt Schack, Mozart's friend told an interviewer that on the last day of Mozart's life, he participated in a rehearsal of his partial Requiem. He said: “On the very eve of his death, [Mozart] had the score of the Requiem brought to his bed, and he sang the alto part” along with three other friends. “They were at the first bars of the Lacrimosa when Mozart began to weep bitterly, laid the score on one side, and eleven hours later… departed this life.”

Biographer Niemetschek relates a similar account, leaving out a rehearsal: “On the day of his death he asked for the score to be brought to his bedside. 'Did I not say before, that I was writing this Requiem for myself?' After saying this, he looked yet again with tears in his eyes through the whole work.”

The widely repeated claim that, on his deathbed, Mozart dictated passages of the Requiem to Süssmayr is strongly discounted by Solomon, who notes that the earliest reference for this claim dates to 1856. Chamber Singers will perform the Requiem version completed by Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Süssmayr's handwriting is in the original manuscript of the Requiem and it was he who was Mozart’s assistant in 1791. After Mozart’s death, his wife Constanze asked Süssmayr to complete the unfinished Requiem to resolve her late husband's debts and support her children. Arnold and Warrack suggest that Süssmayr filled in and orchestrated the early movements and composed the Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. Süssmayr’s completion remains the most well-known of several completions produced since 1791. Although it is difficult to ascertain exactly who all had a hand in completing the work, there is no argument that the Requiem is exceptionally moving.

What is most important for audiences to enjoy is Mozart’s extraordinary compositional craftmanship with its beautiful symmetry and form.

“There is brilliance and gaiety on the surface of Mozart's music, but underneath a dark vein of melancholy that gives his works an ambivalence that is continually fascinating and provocative.” (J. & M. Kennedy)

Katherine Eberle is a retired voice professor from the School of Music at the University of Iowa. She sings with and has served on the board of Chamber Singers for the past two years. She currently teaches voice lessons through West Music.

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Chamber Singers of Iowa City features music of Mozart